


The Contractor

by Ruchira



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27499618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruchira/pseuds/Ruchira
Summary: After getting kicked out of Starfleet, Tom Paris heads to the Federation-Cardassian DMZ in search of anybody who will let him fly. He runs into Chakotay, the leader of a Maquis cell. Pre-Voyager, AU in which Paris never gets caught and doesn't go to prison. Proto-P/T.
Relationships: Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 41
Kudos: 46





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying my hand at posting here first (previously, everything had been on FFN and then got migrated over to here). The idea of doing a "what if Tom never got arrested?" AU was given to me in a comment after another one of my stories, so I played with it for a short little story.
> 
> I know in the novel-verse, Paris and Torres meet while he was flying for Chakotay, but I don't buy into it, especially the idea that there was an instant attraction (even one-sided) during their short pre-Voyager acquaintance. Their interactions the first season or so just don't seem consistent with that idea. So I'm writing this as if in canon, they never met, and the only reason they meet here is because it's an AU in which Paris doesn't get caught and arrested. 
> 
> Obviously, I own nothing of Star Trek and get no financial benefit from posting on a free site.

They said the answer was never found in the bottom of a glass, but Tom Paris figured it wouldn’t hurt to look anyway. There were no answers anywhere else he checked, after all.

No, he determined as he tipped the last of the terrible whiskey into his mouth and glanced at the empty glass. No answers there.

Like most people born on Earth or Federation homeworlds, Paris had only a rudimentary understanding of how currency worked. He knew this particular backwater colony close to the Cardassian border—but not close enough to have been handed over to the Cardassians—used Federation credits, but he wasn’t exactly sure what a credit was or how much one could buy with a credit. For all he knew, the bartender was in the process of ripping him off.

Well, the bartender was definitely in the process of ripping him off. Terrible or not, he knew when whiskey had been watered down.

But most importantly, he had no idea if he could afford the glass of whiskey he had just had. Or the one he was likely to consume next. Or if he would be able to find a place to stay the night, or however long he was here. Or how one managed to get off remote colony worlds close to the Cardassian border and how much that would cost him.

All the fanciest schools from primary school through Starfleet Academy, and not one of them bothered to teach him how currency worked. He would demand a refund if said education had involved the exchange of any currency in the first place.

He was about to bite the bullet and order another round when a man sat in the barstool next to him. The newcomer signaled to the bartender, then pointed at Paris’ now-empty glass—still with no answers to be found—and signaled for two. An entire exchange without a single word; Tom doubted he had managed that once in the course of his life.

The newcomer remained silent as he waited for his drinks, and Paris had to bite his cheek to follow suit. It wasn’t that he wanted to talk to the man—he didn’t really want to talk to anybody—but that he had a hard time sitting next to somebody and _not_ talking to them.

The bartender placed two new glasses of the whiskey in front of the newcomer, who immediately slid one over to Paris. His eyes narrowed, but he certainly wasn’t going to argue about free alcohol, and picked up the glass. “I heard you’re a pilot,” the man said, his eyes down on the glass in his own hand. He didn’t raise it to his lips, just studied it as if it was the whiskey’s piloting skills he was questioning.

Paris breathed out a laugh that was more of a wheeze. “Who wants to know?” he asked. That apparently amused the man, because he finally tore his eyes away from his glass of whiskey and looked over at Paris. He was a big man, solidly built, with a square face and some strange tattoo over his eye.

“I need a pilot for a job,” he said in lieu of an explanation. “Interested?”

This time, the laugh was real, but filled with the cynicism that had been making up Paris’ life for the last seven months. “In a job without any sort of description?” he asked sarcastically. “Sure, why not. I’ve made a lot of terrible decisions recently, let’s just add that to the list.” The nameless man seemed uninterested in Paris’ sarcasm and stared at him for a long minute, until Paris felt himself begin to squirm. He took a sip of the terrible whiskey to give him something to focus on. “What’s in it for me?” he finally asked.

“Your bar tab, for one,” the man said dryly. “A ship to sleep on for the 15-day trip. Has a replicator, too. And you get to fly again. For at least 15 days.”

He had Paris with that last one, but he tried hard not to show it. Flying. It’s what brought him out to this backwater colony in the first place. He certainly wasn’t going to find a flying job on Earth or any other respectable planet in the Federation, not after Caldik Prime, which left him seeking such work on places where people didn’t ask to see a resume. He hadn’t had much luck thus far. To be fair, most of his search had involved the bottoms of various glasses and bottles. “I want credits, too,” Paris said.

The man seemed amused at Paris’ negotiation. “How much?” he asked. Paris had no idea what the going rate was for a 15-day trip.

“What’s your opening offer?” Paris countered, hoping the man didn’t know he was bluffing. The scoff of laughter the man emitted told him that hope was for naught.

“Fifteen hundred,” he said. “That’s a hundred credits a day. And I’m taking out whatever your bar tab is. Considering you’re getting free room and board for the entirety, I think that’s fair. I’ll pay you upon return.”

“Hundred credits a day, plus the bar tab,” Paris countered. “And you pay for my lodging until departure.”

“Hoping to get the ship off the ground tomorrow morning. You can sleep on the ship tonight.”

“I want to be paid up front.”

The man shook his head, not even a chuckle this time. “You’ll be paid upon return,” he said. “That way, I know you’ll return. And no drinking while you work for me. I don’t pay for sloppy pilots. Replicator’s not programmed for it, anyway.”

Paris narrowed his eyes again as he considered this. He could probably hack the replicator to produce some synthale, but the man would find out and withhold his pay. He didn’t like drinking while flying, anyway. He had done a lot of stupid and reckless things with his life, but that was unnecessarily stupid and reckless. “What’s the mission?” he asked, which he knew was tantamount to agreeing to take it.

The man took a PADD from his pocket and slid it over. “Deliver the cargo to Golana. They’ll have another shipment for you to bring back here. Don’t get caught in the DMZ.”

“What’s the cargo?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters if I get caught.”

The man shrugged. “So don’t get caught. You come back in one piece with the return cargo from Golana, you’ll get your credits. You do a good job, maybe we’ve got another for you.”

“And if I don’t do a good job?”

The man shrugged again. “You probably won’t be our problem anymore. Or anyone else’s.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tom Paris was shocked as anyone to discover that the Maquis life suited him.

Well, not the Maquis life, per se. More like a contractor to the Maquis. Although given that nobody had actually told him that he was working for the Maquis, he could claim to still have plausible deniability.

Who was he kidding? Who was and was not Maquis in this area was the worst kept secret. He could claim to not know that he was working for the Maquis, but it would take a really good lawyer to convince any sort of jury that he actually didn’t know. Although given his ignorance of most things out in the colonies, maybe it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch of convince people that he really was that uninformed.

The work kept him occupied, if nothing else. Back in Starfleet, he had thought flights plans were the most boring part of his job, just a box that needed to be checked before he could get to his real job of actually flying. Out here, with Starfleet on one side, Cardassians on the other, rouge elements taking advantage of the lawlessness, not to mention the Badlands itself, plotting out his course was the difference not only between freedom and captivity, but life and death. Here, the flying was secondary. And both exhausting and boring. Given that he was the only person on the transport vessel, sleep was something that had to be carefully scheduled, and even then, often interrupted by proximity alarms.

But he was flying again, and for five to thirty days at a time, he had a purpose again. And a reason to stay sober. Between jobs was another story. Between jobs, when he didn’t have the route to plan out or execute, when he didn’t have the proximity alarms waking him from his brief naps, his mind filled in the blanks with the screams of his dying crewmates. And he tried to drown them out whatever alcohol or synthale he could get his hands on until it was time to put together the next flight plan.

When he returned from his first job to Golana, Chakotay had made good on his promise, handing over the 1500 credits. Paris confirmed by then that he was being stiffed—he found out from the dockhands at Golana that pilots started at 500 credits a day. Going in and out of the Badlands and the DMZ raised the price even further. But two weeks later, when Chakotay again found him in that same bar, in that same state of drunkenness, and offered him another job, he was so relieved for the opportunity to fly again that he didn’t dare ask for more credits in fear that Chakotay would walk away and find another pilot. He couldn’t keep this up. He knew that. But his demons apparently hadn’t gotten the memo.

Ensign Al-Agba had been a persistent pain in the ass while alive. No surprise that his ghost was just as bad.

After the second job, the time between contracts shrunk further and further, until he was lining up the next before he finished the current one. Word had gotten around that he was capable, didn’t ask questions, and hadn’t gotten caught—yet—which were pretty much the only qualifications required for a pilot out there. Chakotay still got first dibs, even though he was paying the least, but Paris would fly for anyone with a ship and some credits or latinum.

He had been flying for Chakotay for over seven months before he had met any members of the man’s crew. He knew that he had a crew; everybody knew that Chakotay was one of the more effective Maquis captains out there, but for as much as he missed being around other people while he was alone on his transport runs, he had no desire to socialize with Maquis. He didn’t even like dealing with Chakotay or the other Maquis who contracted him. His plausible deniability decreased with every day he was hanging out along the DMZ, but he could still almost fool himself that he was just a pilot, doing piloting things. It wouldn’t stand up in a court of law if it came to that, but maybe someday he’d be able to sleep through the night.

The introduction was unexpected. He had boarded Chakotay’s transport shuttle to see a man with dark hair sitting in the never-occupied copilot’s seat. “Uh…” Paris said, his voice trailing off. The man turned to glance at Paris, then turned back to his controls. “Did I get the wrong ship?” he finally asked.

“Nope,” the man replied. “I’m going with you.”

“Chakotay didn’t say anything about a second pilot.”

“Not a pilot,” he said. Paris waited for more explanation, but didn’t get one.

“Then why are you here?” he finally asked.

“Chakotay told me to.”

Again, Paris waited for more—such as what Chakotay might have told the man to do while they were on a five-day run to Umoth VIII—but the man offered nothing further. “He didn’t tell me,” he said. The man shrugged as if that of no consequence to him, and Paris knew he had two choices: he could accept the passenger and carry on with the run, or he could walk away and probably never get another contract from Chakotay. Which in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing, except for the fact that he knew how these things worked out here. If Chakotay burned him, the other Maquis would do so as well, until Paris was left right back where he started: sitting on a barstool, getting drunk off cheap whiskey.

At least he had the credits for it now.

He sighed and finally headed for his seat. “I’m Tom,” he introduced. The man didn’t offer his own name, and Paris sighed again.

This was going to be a long five days.

Tom Paris liked talking. His mother used to laugh about it, his sister teased him about it, and his father tried to train it out of him, but nothing changed the fact that, deep down, he was a people person, and he relished the opportunity to be around people. For the past seven months, the only people he had had to talk to were the dock hands at the various shipping ports and the drunks at the bars, and so he was not going to miss the opportunity to talk to another person, even if said other person displayed no interest in what he was saying and equally little interest in replying.

They were two days in the run before he found out his companion’s name was Mike. And he had dropped him off at Umoth VIII without ever finding out why he was there. His two theories, equally likely in his mind, were either that Chakotay wanted a report back on Paris’ activities and/or loyalties, or that Mike had some sort of business on Umoth VIII and he was essentially part of the cargo that Paris was hauling.

Two weeks later, Chakotay contacted him about another job that added more points in the column of the former: he asked him to fly his own ship, the _Val Jean_.

They were back at Paris’ favorite bar—if one could have a favorite when all he cared about was whether or not they had alcohol and chairs—when Chakotay again took a seat next to him. “I’ve got a mission that pays ten times as much,” was his introduction.

In other words, about what Paris should have been making anyway.

“What’s that?” Paris asked cautiously.

“What do you know about Torros III?”

“I know it’s on the wrong side of the Cardassian border for you to be dropping off ‘equipment,’” Paris replied. The months he had spent studying star charts had taught him that. Chakotay smirked slightly.

“Can you fly there?”

Paris snorted. “Any idiot can plot a course,” he replied. “You want to know if I can fly there without getting killed or captured.”

“Can you fly there without getting killed or captured?” Chakotay asked, the glint in his eye telling Paris that he was enjoying playing along.

“Ah, I see why you’re offering ten times my usual rate,” Paris said dryly. “You don’t think I’ll be around to collect.”

“I’m hoping you will be,” he replied. “I need you to take the _Val Jean_.”

“Take your ship,” Paris echoed flatly, then gave a chuckle as he shook his head. “Despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t have a death wish.”

“The crew needs to get there.”

“So take them.”

“I’ll be busy with something else.”

“The deal has been flying cargo. That’s all.”

“There hasn’t been a deal,” Chakotay reminded him. “You’ve been operating under unofficial contracts and handshakes. If you’re done with those…” his voice trailed off and he shrugged a shoulder. “I get it. The other captains will, too.”

It didn’t take a detective to read through the lines: take the job or there will be no more jobs. “I don’t want your fight, Chakotay,” Paris said. “Don’t get me wrong; I get it. It’s just not my fight and I already have a hard enough time sleeping at night.”

“I just need you to fly the ship,” Chakotay assured him. “You don’t even need to fire phasers. I have people for that.”

“How do your people feel about contractors flying them around? From what I’ve heard around here, a lot of crews would rather phaser a mercenary in the back than take the chance of getting sold out.”

“They do what I tell them to do,” Chakotay said. “If you get killed on this flight, it won’t be from one of my people.”

“Comforting.”

“Space is a dangerous place.”

“Especially out here, right?” Chakotay just tilted his head in acknowledgement of that. “When are we leaving, then?”

“Three days. My engineer is making some repairs.” Chakotay rose from the barstool, his whiskey again untouched. Paris was pretty sure the man didn’t drink, and didn’t have the mental energy to figure out why he would keep paying for drinks he didn’t consume. “I’ll send you the coordinates of the docking port. Don’t be late and don’t be drunk.”

“Yes, sir,” Paris sarcastically. 

He wasn’t sure which he was dreading more: three days left to his own devices on the planet, or going into space with a ship full of Maquis.


	3. Chapter 3

Paris wasn’t drunk when he got to the port, but his aching head and stomach were enough to tell him that he hadn’t stopped drinking soon enough the night before. He usually stopped drinking around the time he started plotting the flight plan, but this trip was different.

With the exception of his five days with Mike the Maquis, this would be the first time he had flown other people since Caldik Prime.

The _Val Jean_ was nothing exciting, at least from the docking port. It looked like its frame was based on a runabout, but an old one, and various people over various years had gotten creative from there. He wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a single original component left. Chakotay had told him to meet him on the bridge. He didn’t explain where the bridge was, but Paris had been on enough ships to know that, even though there was no reason for it, the bridge was always up and fore, and so he headed in that direction.

Surprise, surprise. He was right. It was up an actual ladder, but it was the top deck and as far forward as the ship went.

He found the Maquis captain in a chair that he supposed could be the captain’s chair, but could probably also be the helm, or maybe tactical, or maybe all three. “You rang?” he said sarcastically to announce his presence, and it was only after the words were out of his mouth that he registered the other people on the bridge: Mike the Maquis; a woman who could be Klingon but was probably half or less, judging by her ridges; a skinny human man with dark hair; and a Bajoran woman already with a sneer on her face.

“Right on time,” Chakotay said, ignoring Paris’ sarcasm. He gestured around him. “Ayala, Bendera, Torres, Seska, this is Tom. He’ll be flying you to Torros. He’s been working for me for several months. He checks out.” Mike—Paris had no idea which surname belonged to the big and silent man—gave a slight nod as if confirming that piece of information, and Paris knew without a doubt what Mike had been doing on his shuttle a few weeks before, just as he knew why he had had contracts with other Maquis captains. Chakotay was seeking independent verification, not of his credentials, but his loyalty. He supposed there was probably a spy issue out there, probably going both ways between Starfleet and the Maquis. The Cardassians would probably try to get in on that as well, but it was harder to hide a Cardassian in a Maquis crew than yet another random human or Bajoran. “You have a flight plan, Tom?”

Paris didn’t know if there was a reason why Chakotay was purposefully avoiding his surname, especially given that he didn’t seem to mind using them for his own crew, but he went along with it anyway. “Yeah,” he said. He glanced at the PADD in his hands, and then around the bridge. The viewscreen was currently displaying the docking port, and he wasn’t sure if it was a viewscreen at all or just a viewport. “Uh, where are the display controls?”

The part-Klingon woman huffed impatiently in her seat—tactical? Engineering? Helm?—and pressed a few controls, and Paris was relieved to see that the viewscreen was actually a viewscreen and not just a viewport. “Right,” he murmured, then transferred the flight plan from his PADD to the screen. “We’ll go through the Badlands and around—”

“That’s going to add at least two days to our route,” the part-Klingon woman interrupted, then looked over at Chakotay when she said, “If we just go directly—”

“Listen, uh…” Paris trailed off when he realized he didn’t know her name.

“B’Elanna,” she huffed out, her face getting red. “Torres.”

“Listen, Torres,” he resumed. “I’ve been flying these routes for almost eight months, and if we go direct,” he tapped a few controls on his PADD, and previously hidden tactical points appeared on the route, “we’re going to run right into this Cardassian patrol here, or maybe these pirates here. I know where people tend to hang out around here. I’d rather add two days than add some time in Cardassian prison.”

Her face reddened further. She opened her mouth to say something, but Chakotay’s raised hand stopped her. Maybe the captain hadn’t been exaggerating when he said how well-trained they were. “He’s the pilot,” Chakotay said simply. He glanced over at Mike. “Ayala, you’re in charge. Make sure someone shows Paris where the berth is at some point. Bendera, you’re with me.”

“Aww, I always miss the good ones,” the skinny man said. “See y’all on Torros in a few weeks.”

After Chakotay and Bendera took off, Mike—Ayala—took a seat in the left station—tactical? Engineering?—and Torres and the Bajoran—he guessed that would be Seska, by process of elimination—disappeared down the ladder off the bridge to parts unknown. “Any secrets to flying this thing?” Paris asked as he activated the controls and began to familiarize himself during a pre-flight.

“It’s old,” Ayala said. “You get used to it.”

Paris chuckled at the succinct reply; about what he expected. “Right,” he said. The frame of the ship may have been an old runabout, but the navigational array appeared to have been salvaged from something Starfleet had put to pasture at least two decades before, and he’d be surprised if the engines were younger than he was. But Chakotay had been flying around in it with his crew of—Paris realized that he had no idea how many people were on board with him at the moment.

Great.

About an hour after Chakotay and Bendera took off, they were cleared by both engineering and the port to depart, and they were off. It was a little shaky at first, but Ayala was right when he predicted that Paris would get used to it.

After a few hours, Paris began to suspect that they didn’t have regular shifts on the _Val Jean_. Ayala had gone and someone had taken his place without introducing herself, and a couple of hours later, a man ascended the ladder and took a seat at the engineering—or was it ops?—station, also without saying anything to Paris. “So,” he finally said, the first words he had spoken since they left orbit. “How do shifts work around here?”

“Need a break?” the woman at tactical asked. He barely bit back the impulse to say, _well, I wasn’t planning on staying awake for the fourteen-day trip to Torros_ , but she had seemed nice enough—at least by comparison—so he refrained.

“I’ve got the route on autopilot, but I’m not sure about your protocols for leaving the conn unmanned,” he explained. She nodded.

“Henley can take over for you,” the woman said. She brought her wrist to her mouth—wrist communicators; Paris wasn’t even sure if his father had used such technology in his decades-long Starfleet career—and said something Paris didn’t catch. “She’ll be up in a few,” the woman informed him.

“Thanks,” Paris replied, feeling his anxiety drop a few notches. Maybe he’d get through this intact and live to take another contract after all.

For the next two days, he alternated between the helm and the berth, with occasional side trips to the replicator for something to eat. It was during one of those stays in the berth that the ship shook enough to shake him right out of that narrow cot. “What the fuck?” he asked, rising to his feet. The ship didn’t have any sort of red alert-like system like a Starfleet ship would have had, but he filled that absence in in his head, imagining the red lights and blaring klaxons.

The angry shouts of the crew didn’t really fit into his imagined Starfleet scenario, but he was working on being more flexible.

The scenario on the bridge wasn’t much better, with Mike in the tactical seat and Seska at the helm. “What the fuck?” he asked again.

“Cardassians,” Mike replied, just as the ship shook again from another direct hit.

“Move!” Paris snapped at Seska.

“I’ve got it!” she snapped back, right when the Cardassian phasers made contact with their hull.

“Clearly not!” She glared at him, but finally stepped away from the helm.

Paris remembered all of the Starfleet maneuvers well enough that he didn’t even have to think of them, his hands working the controls while he studied the charts. “We’re close enough to the Badlands,” he said. “Mike, keep them off us long enough to get us inside. They won’t follow us in.”

“Sure,” Mike replied.

The hardest thing for new pilots to grasp was the orientation of space. Whether growing up on a planet or a station, everything was two dimensional; you got around by navigating in a cardinal direction. You didn’t travel from city to city by going up or down. Space was different, but new pilots still thought of things as forwards and backwards or straight lines, and forgot that there was no such thing as direction in space. There was no north or south, east or west, and technically, no up and down, but the explanation of why there was no up and down went into the realm of that advanced subspace geometry course Paris had really liked at the Academy. He had heard of more than one cadet who ran into an asteroid just past Mars, because they forgot that such things didn’t just exist in a straight line.

Fortunately for all of them on the _Val Jean_ , Tom Paris had been flying since he was 8. He hadn’t had time to formulate ideas about the orientation of the universe before he went out into it.

The best place to evade into the Badlands wasn’t to their right or left. Without getting into the geometry of it, it would be easiest to say it was right above them.

It was a tense half an hour of flying, between avoiding the Cardassian phasers and the plasma storms in the Badlands. “They’re gone,” Mike announced in that way of his, as if he was announcing nothing more exciting than a new replicator menu.

“Glad to hear it,” Paris replied tightly.

By his estimation, they had another 12 to 14 hours of the worst of the plasma storms. And maybe another five or six hours after that before he would feel comfortable turning the helm over to someone else. In his months of flying in this sector, this segment was both the worst and the best segment in all the routes. It was the best because it was interesting and actually allowed him to use the skills he spent a lifetime developing. It was the worst because it was long and exhausting.

He didn’t know how long he had spent alone on the bridge, navigating around the plasma storms, when Torres came and dropped into the engineering/ops station in a huff. “We _finally_ finished the critical repairs from that little stunt you pulled,” she said hotly, her eyes fixed down on the controls.

“ _Me_?” he echoed in disbelief. “I was asleep! Seska was at the helm. And I have _no_ idea who turned off the proximity alerts!” She looked at him, appearing confused. “I set proximity alerts,” he explained needlessly. “Since I usually do this route alone.”

She was still staring at him as if trying to figure out who or what he was. “That’s not what Seska said,” she finally said. He shrugged.

“Okay?” He asked. He couldn’t control what other people on the ship said, and if they wanted to make him the scapegoat, he could live with that, as long as they all emerged alive and Chakotay continued to employ him. Torres was still looking at him, and finally huffed out a breath of air and returned her attention to the controls. He didn’t know if that meant she believed him or not, but as long as she didn’t kill him, he didn’t really care.


	4. Chapter 4

Torres and Paris worked side by side in silence on the bridge for well over two hours, her still working on repairing systems from that impromptu Cardassian attack and him still navigating through the thickest of the plasma storms. He had no idea what time it was when she finally leaned back in her seat and let out an exhausted sigh. “We still have about 11 hours until we’re through this section of the Badlands,” Paris said. “Things calm down a bit after that, but we won’t be out of the Badlands for a few more days.”

“I’ve flown this route before,” she snapped at him.

“Sorry,” he said defensively. “Just wanted to make sure to give you a timeline for repairs.”

She glared at him briefly but didn’t reply, and then returned to face forward and closed her eyes as she leaned her head back. Sitting there like that, looking as tired as she looked, Paris realized that she was probably younger than he initially thought. Then again, he had no idea how Klingons aged—she could have been 10 or 40 or anywhere in between—but sitting there, her head back and her eyes closed, she looked impossibly young for being out here, flying through the Badlands while evading Cardassians and Starfleet and who knew who else. Not that he had much room to talk; he was still short of a quarter century himself. Chronologically, anyway. He felt older. He had made enough mistakes to be much older. “When was the last time you slept?” he asked, realizing after the words left his mouth how patronizing they sounded.

“I don’t sleep much,” she replied. She didn’t snap at him that time; her words were matter-of-fact, and he took that to mean that she actually didn’t sleep much and probably preferred working on the engines to whatever else there was to do on a Maquis ship. Keeping the ship running probably gave her enough to do that she could easily stay busy without trying.

“So,” he asked a few minutes later. “Is it me you don’t like, or is it all contractors?”

She was still leaning back in her chair, but her lips quirked slightly at the question. “It’s not that I don’t like you,” she said. “I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you. I don’t have a tendency to trust any mercenaries.”

He winced slightly at the word; he preferred ‘contractor,’ even though he knew that ‘mercenary’ was probably a better fit, given that he was flying for people who made a business out of seeding war. “And why’s that?” he asked, keeping his voice intentionally light.

“Because there’s nothing stopping you from selling us out to someone paying you more.”

He snorted at that. “You must not know how criminally underpaid I am.”

To his surprise, she chuckled. “Oh, we know,” she informed him. “We just didn’t realize _you_ knew.”

He smiled at that as well; he had to admit that getting fleeced by a Maquis commander was a little funny, even though that meant he was laughing at his own expense. “I just want to fly,” he assured her.

“There are other places you could do that,” she pointed out. “You don’t need to literally get in bed with the Maquis just to fly.”

“There aren’t,” he informed her with a slight shake of the head. “Nobody else would let me get within 50 meters of a helm station. Not with my record.”

“What’d you do, crash a ship?” she asked with a snort, and like that, it was as if he was back at Caldik Prime.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “A shuttle, but… yeah.” She went quiet at his admission, but he didn’t know if it was his words or the fact that he had said them.

“Big deal,” she said a few seconds later, trying but failing to keep that same light bluster in her voice. “People crash shuttles all the time.”

“They do,” he confirmed with a nod. “What got me kicked out of Starfleet and exiled out here was the fact that people died. And I lied about it.” He focused his attention on his hands, watching them as they moved along the controls in efforts of not thinking about that day.

“How many?” She asked. He didn’t like talking about it, but for some reason, sitting there with the pinks and purples of the plasma storms streaming in from the view screen, alone on the bridge, he found himself talking.

“Three,” he said. “Al-Agba, O’Sullivan, Landen.” He paused, then amended, “Django, Divya, and Ren. We had been lower decks together.” He looked over at Torres and explained, “It was the first assignment for all of us. Ensigns shared these tiny quarters in the bowels of the ship and most of our work was on the lower decks.”

“I thought pilots were always on the bridge.”

He smiled at that. “Common misperception,” he joked. “I had the occasional bridge post, but most of the time I was taking shuttles out for routine check flights and filling in for the senior pilots when they stepped out for lunch or something. Divya was the first promoted—engineers usually are. I was next. Django and Ren were still ensigns.” He winced at the memory. They had been friends, and like all friends in such an environment like the lower decks of a large spaceship, celebrated each other’s victories while dying a little inside at the realization that it hadn’t been you. “Divya may have been the senior officer—by a month—but I was the pilot, the one on the command track. It was my first time commanding an away mission, and, well.” He trailed off, trying to convince himself that the plasma storms he was seeing wasn’t the impending collision with a planet. “I crashed the shuttle on the way down, which put a pretty rapid end to my first command. It was my fault, but I blamed it on one system or another, said that Divya must have missed it on the checks.” Torres still wasn’t saying anything, and he blew out a stream of air in something that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob. “Kicker was, they believed me,” he said. “Turns out, you can kill three of your friends and Starfleet won’t bat an eye.”

“So what happened?”

He didn’t answer her for a minute, his eyes again on his hands. “As it happens, confessing that you lied during the investigation doesn’t make the guilt go away, but it is something that Starfleet _does_ have a big problem with it. There was another investigation, there was an inquest, and we parted ways.” He paused to focus on that plasma storm. “Also turns out, drinking dulls the pain a little bit. Or, at least, makes you care less about it. The only time I can stop focusing on the accident is when I’m focusing on flying. And nobody back in the civilized parts of the Federation is willing to take their chances on an often-drunk pilot who crashed a shuttle, lied about it, and got cashiered out of Starfleet.”

This was more than he had said to anybody, including the Starfleet-mandated counselor as he was in the process of being kicked out, and he didn’t know why B’Elanna Torres would be the person he would talk to, especially immediately after her blunt declaration that she didn’t trust him. “And all of that led you to a bar in the fringes of the Federation, just waiting for some Maquis commander to ask you to fly a shuttle,” Torres summed up.

“That’s about it,” he agreed. “I guess, in summary, I have no desire to sell you out for the highest bidder, because no other bidder is willing to give me the only thing I want. All I want to do is fly.”

She had a frown on her face as she studied him for a long minute. “So Chakotay and others pay you to fly, but for how long? Until you’re caught? Until you’re killed?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” he admitted. “I just… can’t make any plans longer than my next contract.” He didn’t know how to explain it. He had never been all that good at planning to begin with—it seemed like a waste of energy growing up, as his father put an inordinate amount of energy into planning his next move for him, and then his Starfleet career had ended before he got to the point that he had any authority to make any decisions of any consequences—and now he didn’t know how to do it and didn’t know how to learn. And wasn’t sure he wanted to learn. He wouldn’t say he enjoyed his current life, the long runs alone in a shuttle separated by drunken binges at port, but it was a pace he could handle. And part of him, maybe the largest part, wasn’t sure he deserved better than the purgatory of running supplies for the Maquis, never sleeping well, never quite sure if this run would be his last or not.

“Why don’t you just get your own ship?” Torres asked, cutting into his reverie again. “Save up your credits from these supply runs, get a ship with a replicator, float around the cosmos at your leisure. Hell, you can even get a cargo certificate and do this work on the legit side once you get bored with floating around and feeling sorry for yourself.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her blunt manner, but shook his head. “I’m not ready for that,” he said. “Maybe someday. Probably someday. But not yet.”

They lapsed into silence again, and although Paris didn’t typically like silences—he found them awkward and would say anything and everything that passed through his mind in order to fill them—he found this one companionable, and was content to just sit there with the slight engineer as they bobbed and weaved around plasma storms.

Mike came onto the bridge, and although no words were exchanged, Torres seemed to take that as her cue to leave. “You’re an idiot, Tom,” she said. There was no malice in her voice, nothing snide or cutting, just a statement of fact.

Paris agreed with her assessment.


	5. Chapter 5

After the trip to Torros, Paris had three days back at his usual bar before his next supply run for Chakotay. “I’ve been told to pay you the going rate from now on,” the Maquis captain commented.

“Oh?”

“Torres said you know you’re being fleeced,” Chakotay explained. “Said we better pay you better or you’re going to sell us out to someone who pays better.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Paris assured him.

“I know,” Chakotay said, even though Paris had no idea if he believed him or not. _Trust nobody_ seemed to be the going philosophy out here, and it was probably a good one. “It’s easier to do what my engineer asks than fight her on something inconsequential.” Paris didn’t know if Chakotay was calling the payment inconsequential or if he was using that to refer to Paris himself, and he didn’t ask. He also didn’t ask if Torres was really concerned about him selling out Chakotay’s cell to the highest bidder, or if this was an attempt at getting him out of the game by encouraging him to buy his own ship, some junker with a replicator that would allow him to float around in space and fly without having to answer to anybody. It was a nice thought. He didn’t know the half-Klingon well enough to know if she was being nice, but he decided to take the idea anyway. He could use some nice people in his life.

Two months had gone by since the trip to Torros before Chakotay approached Paris about flying the _Val Jean_ again. It would be the same deal: Chakotay needed to take the shuttle on a side mission, so Paris would fly the _Val Jean_ and its crew, they would meet up, and Paris would take the shuttle back to their usual home base. Where he would probably get drunk yet again at the same bar until Chakotay or somebody else approached him with another contract.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

If the crew had warmed to Paris at all in his two-month absence, it didn’t show. In fact, there was one new crew member—at least, one crew member that Paris hadn’t noticed before—a tall Vulcan man with that ever-present look of disapproval that Vulcans always seemed to have. Paris didn’t know what a Vulcan was doing in an inherently emotional fight such as the Maquis, but he didn’t ask. For all he knew, the man had lived on one of the colonies in the now-demilitarized zone, maybe had lost some family members like so many others in the crew.

He didn’t ask, Tuvok didn’t tell, but he could feel the man’s disapproving gaze in the back of his neck at just about every waking hour.

It was the same routine as before: bridge, replicator, bridge, berth, replicator, bridge, etc, etc ad nauseam, until he no longer had any idea what time it was and only the navigational array gave him any hint on how long he had been aboard and flying that mission.

B’Elanna Torres was still on board the _Val Jean_ ; Paris knew that because she had been a spitting cobra from the moment he came aboard, to the point that her own crew—even Seska, whom he thought was her friend—was giving her a wide berth and staying out of the half-Klingon engineer’s way. Paris had a hard time reconciling this angry force of nature with the tired, almost resigned young woman who had sat with him on the bridge as he navigated endless plasma storms, and by halfway through this mission to attack some weapon’s depot or something, he had convinced himself that the conversation and his confessions of what had led him to that particular area of space had all been a figment of his imagination.

About a week into the flight, they came into a sector that had decent Starfleet presence. Starfleet typically tended to turn a blind eye on random ships flying through the area, unless it was someone doing something unsafe or blatantly illegal, or if it was a ship they knew. Paris hadn’t confirmed that the _Val Jean_ was on a list of known Maquis ships, but he didn’t want this to be the time that he found out one way or the other, nor did he want to be on the receiving end of over-eager ensigns looking to prove themselves in the eyes of their senior officers. “I can hide us from their sensors,” Torres said, interrupting Paris’ stream of consciousness ramblings to Tuvok on the topic. He stopped talking and turned to her, completely unaware that she had entered the bridge—she was standing by the ladder instead of sitting at the ops station she occasionally occupied—and intrigued by what this fix would be.

Taking his silence as disbelief, the engineer flushed and frowned. “Thoron and duranium shadows,” she said impatiently, as if it was something any child should have been able to figure out. Without waiting for a response from either Paris or Tuvok, she crossed to the ops station with two quick strides and entered some commands. “It’s not foolproof, obviously,” she said, her voice clipped. “But even if they detect us, they won’t register that we have any sort of weapons system and they’d probably leave us alone.”

“Good to know,” Paris said. “Thanks.” He was still going to keep an eye out for Starfleet ships and stay as far out of their sensor range as possible, but he’d take any Maquis tricks he could get. Assuming this didn’t result in any ‘Good Samaritan’ captains deciding to give them a hand with their apparent thoron leak.

Torres stayed on the bridge to monitor the chemical sensor net she had deployed, and eventually, Tuvok had left to do… something. If his schedule was anything like Paris’, he was either eating or heading to bed. “I didn’t even make it far enough into my Starfleet career to get to the point where I could ruin it,” Torres commented. Paris blinked in surprise, and then said the first thing that popped into his head.

“You were in Starfleet?”

“Not really,” she said. “I lasted three semesters at the Academy. Finished my last final in December of my second year, packed my bags, and headed out.”

“Why’d you leave?”

She shrugged a shoulder, her eyes still on her console. “We weren’t a good fit,” she said simply. From what he had seen on the _Val Jean_ , she was probably right, but Starfleet had missed out on a damn good engineer.

He pondered that for a minute, then wondered how one went from the Academy to the backwaters of the Cardassian DMZ, and the most obvious answer hit him. Not everyone had grown up on Earth, after all. “Did you grow up out here?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said simply, then added, “Beta quadrant. Kessik IV.”

He knew about Kessik because it was one of the tips of the Delta Triangle; he had done a report in a secondary school history class about the Delta Triangle, the ships that had disappeared there, and the theories as to why. “How’d you end up out here?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Same as you,” she said simply. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could work and people wouldn’t care about my credentials. Or the fact that I didn’t have any.” She paused as she considered her own words. “I’ll probably finish my engineering degree at some point,” she said quickly, as if she was afraid that he thought less of someone without a degree. “But I’m a little too busy for that right now.”

No kidding; as it was, it was good that she didn’t sleep much, because the hours she spent tweaking the engines was the only thing that kept that bag of bolts moving. “What’s _your_ plan?” he asked, remembering how she had asked him the same thing the last time. “Stay with the Maquis and hope that you end up in jail instead of dead? Federation penal system seems to be focused on rehabilitation. I imagine they’d let you finish your degree then.”

She must have picked up on the sarcasm of his words, because her face flushed in anger. “Are you suggesting that I just _leave_? Just so I can some degree that I _don’t even need_?”

She certainly demonstrated that she didn’t need a degree to do her job; the _Val Jean_ was proof enough of that. “You asked me why I don’t just get a ship and leave. Why don’t you?”

He didn’t think it was possible, but her face got even more red. “Because I’m not some _mercenary_ just after a paycheck!” she replied. He knew the words were supposed to sting, but they didn’t. It wasn’t technically false, even though his motivations were more about flying than credits. “Do you even _know_ what the Cardassians do to these colonists? To the Bajorans? _Somebody_ needs to stand up to them, and it’s clearly not the Federation!”

He had his own thoughts on the fact that Starfleet and the rest of the Federation didn’t do more for the Bajorans or the colonists, but he wasn’t going to go get into a sociopolitical discussion with an angry half-Klingon engineer on the bridge of a ship. He could tell that she was motivated by her anger at the injustice of it all, and couldn’t blame her for that, even though there was a whole reality that she wasn’t considering and that it was in the Federation’s best interests to avoid war with the Cardassians, even at the expense of some colonists—who had been given the opportunity to leave and stubbornly chose not to—and turning a blind eye to the Bajoran occupation. “Why is it your fight?”

“Why _isn’t_ it yours?” she shot back. “I thought Starfleet was supposed to teach officers to stand up for the little guy, but I guess that only applies when it’s convenient to do so.”

He took a deep breath; this was not a discussion he planned on getting in, not on that bridge or at any other time. “The Maquis aren’t going to win this,” he said. “Do you honestly believe that you’re going to defeat the Cardassians? Or Starfleet, much less both?”

She shook her head sadly, and he got the impression that she was disappointed that he didn’t get it. “I forget who said it or about what, and I’m probably butchering the quote, but to the oppressor, to not win is to lose. For the underdog, to not lose it to win. We’re not going to take over the Cardassian Empire or the Federation, we know that. All we want is for them to acknowledge that what they’re doing is wrong and to _leave_.”

“Do you know much about Earth history?” She blinked at the apparent non-sequitur before shaking her head. “Do you know where the word ‘maquis’ comes from?” he continued.

“No,” she admitted.

“It’s from Earth’s second world war,” he explained. “It was the French resistance to the Nazi occupation of France. Initially, it was young men who escaped into the mountains avoid being conscripted into the German forces, but they gradually became organized—somewhat—into active resistance and guerrilla warfare. Their goal was to make the terrain unpredictable and therefore dangerous for the Germans, and therefore leave them alone.”

“What happened to them?” Torres asked. “Did they drive out the Germans?”

He shook his head. “No, that was allied armies that did that. The British. The Americans. The Maquis helped divide the attention of the Germans, which helped the allied forces gain footholds.”

“So they were successful,” she said, almost triumphantly. “They didn’t lose.”

“Who do you think is going to come to help you?” he asked. “The Federation has a treaty with the Cardassians. Starfleet isn’t on your side, either.”

“If we can just make them realize that they’re wrong—”

“That is not something the Federation does easily,” he interrupted, and she flushed again.

“You’ve made it pretty clear where you stand on this,” she said, now clearly annoyed. “So why even stay? If this is such a pointless fight, why be involved in it at all?”

“I already told you why.”

“You don’t get to be halfway in this!” she exclaimed. “Do you think Starfleet is going to care that you were only a ‘contractor’ if you get caught? They’re still going to throw you in jail. Cardassians would do worse. If you don’t believe in the Maquis, you need to leave while you can.”


	6. Chapter 6

It had been four months since the last time Paris has flown the _Val Jean_ , so the last person he expected to see when he stepped off Chakotay’s smaller shuttle was anyone from the _Val Jean._

But there, standing at the end of the docking port, was B’Elanna Torres.

“Chakotay asked me to check on the shuttle,” she said brusquely, brushing by him on the way to the shuttle.

“Uh… hi,” Paris said in response. He waited a second, and then turned and followed her back up to the shuttle, very glad that he always made a point to clean the ship and refresh everything before he docked.

By the time he caught up to her, Torres had already had a panel off and was studying the relays hidden behind it—EPS? Navigational array?—with a tricorder. “Hey, new tricorder?” Paris asked.

“Apparently some Starfleet officer left it behind at a star base,” Torres commented, her eyes not leaving the small machine.

“Huh.”

“I know, right?” Her lips quirked in a smile but her eyes were still on the tricorder when she asked, “Have you found a ship yet?”

“I haven’t looked for one,” he replied.

“You should get on that.”

“Listen, Torres,” he said, more sternly than he anticipated. “I know you have this thing against mercenaries, but we’ve known each other for less than a year, and you’ve been trying to get rid of me ever since we met.”

“It’s just…” her voice trailed off, and then she turned to face him.

And then did the last thing he expected.

She kissed him.

Hard.

Since he had gotten kicked out of Starfleet and begun his drunken binge that took him to the fringes of Federation space, sex had been a transactional thing for Tom Paris. Not in an ‘exchange of currency for sex’ type of way, but a ‘we both want something for the other without it meaning anything’ type of way. Maybe because moans of pleasure drowned out the memory of Divya’s whimpers of pain for the three minutes it took her to die.

He hadn’t thought of Torres that way, and then wondered why he hadn’t. She was sexy as hell, even when she was angry and exhausted and covered in grime from the _Val Jean_ ’s shitty engines.

And currently working on the clasp of his pants.

“Torres…”

“Shut up, Tom.”

“Right,” he agreed.

Sex with Torres was pretty much the way Paris would have expected, had he given himself the moment to contemplate sex with Torres—hard, a little faster than he would have preferred, just on the safe side of violent—and as he tried to catch his breath and do a self-inventory for any sort of bodily injury afterwards, he again had the fleeting thought that he was really glad he made a habit of cleaning the shuttle and refreshing the bedding on the cot before he returned to port. “What was that about?” he asked when Torres sat up.

She looked over at him, her expression as unreadable as always, and for a long moment, neither said anything. “Chakotay’s going to ask you to fly the _Val Jean_ again.”

“Okay?” he asked, then shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

She shook her head. “No, this is different,” she said. “It’s…not just a delivery run. He’s going to be on the mission, too. You don’t have to do it.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Find your ship, Tom,” she said, her voice emphatic. “Get some shuttle and just get away from here.”

“Come with me,” he blurted out, the words out of his mouth before he could think about them, and then he realized that it was a perfect solution. “With your engineering skills and my flying, we can do anything. We can get some junker for cheap and fix it up.”

She shook her head. “I’m not going to give up this fight, Tom.”

“This isn’t even your fight, B’Elanna! It’s not like you grew up out here!”

“It _became_ my fight, Tom!” she replied.

“ _Why?_ ” he asked emphatically. “These aren’t persecuted populations—okay, the Bajorans are, no argument from me on that one—but not the Federation citizens. It’s not like anyone is taking ripping them from their ancestral homelands. They’re not fighting for their heritage. None of these colonies out here are more than twenty years old. They’re fighting for the right to continue to be allowed to be imperialist colonizers.”

She glared at him for a long minute. “So what if they are?” she finally asked. “Who cares if they’ve been there for five years, or fifty, for five million? Who are you to decide what a home is?”

“Who are you?”

“Do you even _know_ what the Cardassians are doing to these ‘imperialist colonizers?’” she asked, her tone mocking on the last two words. “This isn’t some peaceful transition of power, and most of the time, it’s for nothing. They’re being brutal _just because they can_.”

“It wouldn’t be an issue if the people had just done what they were told!”

“Failing to evict is not a capital offense!” she shot back. “Okay, so staying when they’re told to leave wasn’t the best idea. It’s breaking the law. But do they _really_ deserve to _die_ just because they don’t want to give up their homes? The Cardassians are power-hungry _bullies_ , and someone needs to stand up to them!” She looked at him hotly, breathing hard from her yelling. “This is my fight now, Tom,” she said a minute later, her voice significantly calmer and colder. “And I have to see it through, because that’s the kind of person I am.” She paused, looking at him. “It’s the kind of person you are, too,” she added, her voice soft.

He snorted and shook his head. “Don’t go ascribing qualities to me that I don’t have.”

She rolled her eyes. “Stop acting like you don’t care, Tom,” she ordered. “You’re a good person, whether you can see it yet or not. You could have stayed on Earth and gotten drunk until you died in a gutter, but you came out here for a reason.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “So I can fly. So I _wouldn’t_ drink myself to an early death in a gutter.”

“There are a lot of other places in other fringes of the Federation that need pilots, but you came here,” she pointed out. “And I’m sure you’ve saved more than enough credits by now to buy yourself a shuttle and fly away from this mess, but here you still are.”

“I’ve told you this already,” he said. This was probably the first time he had been so impatient while naked—with a woman who was just as naked—after sex instead of before. “Why are you pushing me so hard about this?”

She looked at him for a long minute with that penetrating look of hers, before she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Do whatever you want, Tom,” she said, turning away as she began gathering her clothes.

“Wait, Torres.” He said the words to stop her, and then realized he didn’t know what he was going to say after getting her attention. He sighed. “What’s the mission?”

She stopped and turned back to him and then also sighed. “It’s a raid, on a Cardassian station by the Badlands. Gul Evek is involved somehow. He and Chakotay really have it out for each other.”

“Cardassian raid by the Badlands,” he repeated, then gave her his best grin. “Sounds like you’re going to need a pilot.”

“Chakotay does okay,” she said. “He’s a bit heavy handed, but he hasn’t killed us yet.” He gave her another grin. She frowned as studied him, then rolled her eyes and gestured vaguely around them. “Don’t just do this because of… this.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Torres.” She glared briefly, then rolled her eyes again. “You’re the one who said it—there were other places I could have gone to fly, but I’m here. Jury’s still out on whether or not I’m a good person, though.”

“Good is a relative term out here,” she said, and he saw the corners of her lips quirk as she tried to stop a smile. She rolled her eyes, and he saw the resignation—and maybe something else—in her eyes. “Put your clothes back on, Tom,” she said.

“Are you sure? This could be the last time—”

“See you on the _Val Jean_.”

The _Val Jean_ was exactly where Paris expected it to be, and for a minute, he stared at the docking port, unsure if he really wanted to do that. If he continued, if he walked through those doors, he knew that his time as a contractor—as a mercenary—would be over, and he would be a full-fledged Maquis, for whatever that would mean. He could probably convince Chakotay to continue paying him and he still had his credits in savings; as long as he stayed one step ahead of the law, he could leave whenever he wanted and buy that ship that Torres was always getting on him about. But until then, he would be doing whatever it took to be a thorn in the sides of the Cardassians and the Federation.

He would have to grow some convictions, and fast.

He was going to have to learn to care about other people. And maybe someday, learn to care about himself again.

He didn’t know if he was ready for that.

_But if not now, when will you be ready?_

He took a deep breath, and then stepped forward and keyed in Chakotay’s access codes.

Standing there, just inside the _Val Jean_ , her arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her face, was B’Elanna Torres. “Took you long enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad you liked the story! I had no clue on the timing of anything in canon (Paris joining in the Maquis, getting caught, how much jail time he had served, etc), so I have no idea if the timeline between his first contract with Chakotay and "Caregiver" is accurate, but the "big mission" Torres mentioned in the last chapter was meant to be the one that happened off screen right before the opener of "Caregiver," with the resulting implication that Paris was on board when they were taken into the Delta quadrant.
> 
> I know I could continue this story on Voyager, and maybe I will someday, but for the meantime, I am leaving that to your imaginations :)


End file.
